Nbc's Ebersol Assembling Biggest Olympic Team Ever

MEDIA

June 11, 2004|By JOHN HOWELL; Courant Staff Wrtier

Some of the best NBA players are saying thanks but no way. A drug scandal is catching up to glamour sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. The terrorist threat remains high. Some say you just have to be nuts to want any part of Athens and the Summer Olympics. But NBC chairman Dick Ebersol is Old School.

``I'm the dreamer,'' Ebersol said Wednesday.

Someone better be.

``In a world with as many tensions as our world,'' Ebersol said, ``there's that moment of just sheer hope that comes from seeing all the best young athletes in the world all gathered together [for the Opening Ceremonies], and you say, maybe the whole world can work.''

Anyway, the Peacock, which is paying $715 million for the Athens Games Aug. 13-29, is not about to begin without us:

Ebersol and NBC brass said in a conference call that around-the-clock coverage will swell to 1,210 hours, up from about 800 originally and almost triple the coverage in Sydney in 2000.

More than 300 hours will be live, mostly in early morning and midday, considering a seven-hour time difference. The seven channels will average 70 hours of coverage each day over 17 days.

To keep a handle on it all, NBC and TV Guide Network are partnering to create an Olympic menu on channel guides.

With all those hours, ``It's mind-boggling to us,'' Ebersol said.

And it's not out of this world to think two extra channels with the potential to reach more than 85 percent of cable viewers might help goose a few advertisers off the fence. With the Games two months away, Ebersol & Co. said NBC's goal of $1 billion in ad sales was 90 percent complete. Broadcasting & Cable reported this week that it was more like 85 percent, ``slightly behind schedule.''

Then again, ``This is their baby,'' said Scott Soshnick, a sports business writer for Bloomberg News. ``NBC, first and foremost, and Dick Ebersol's love, his passion, is the Olympic Games. They will devote every minute, every resource that they can.''

NBC will anchor weekday coverage from 12:30-4 p.m. and 8 to midnight. MSNBC and Bravo are mainly responsible for the overnight coverage.

``In these times, the Olympics have more value than ever,'' Ebersol said. ``I happen to believe that the BALCO incident is part of an enormous cleansing process in track and field that can only be good for the sport.''

Any possible track and field fallout will not disrupt your viewing pleasure, Ebersol said.

``That night [after the women's 100 meters] and the next night, when you have the fastest man competition, we have platform diving,'' Ebersol said. ``So we might expand that coverage a little. And gymnastics has five event finals.''

As for the Opening Ceremonies? Said Ebersol: ``It's a much clearer indication of the world working together than we ever get from, say, a session of the U.N. General Assembly.''

Deja View: Coverage in Athens will surpass the combined total of the past five Summer Olympics (1,133 hours). In 1976 in Montreal, there were 76 1/2 hours on TV.

View From The Couch

Mike Gorman and Rebecca Lobo call back-to-back Sun games on WTXX, Ch. 20 starting tonight against Sue Bird and Seattle. ... ESPN debuts ``Who's #1'' Tuesday at 7 p.m. as part of its 25th-year celebration. No. 4 is the 2001-02 UConn women's basketball team. ... Bill Walton narrates ``The Player and the Coach,'' a 60-minute study of the Celtics' Bill Russell and Red Auerbach on the History Channel tonight at 8. ... WVIT, Ch. 30 scored an 18.6 rating in Hartford/New Haven for the Belmont Stakes. The highest-rated market was Smarty Jones' hometown of Philadelphia (28.1).